What's Next - Blame it on the gene ?

Blonde's will be extinct in 200 years!

A talking ape discovered in the forests of Sumatra!!

30+ and unemployed, taking drugs? No problem, a healthy dose of the Maturity Gene will set everything to rights !!

Forget global warming ... from Michael Crichton's pen comes this sometimes logical, sometimes horrifying tale of the dangers inherent in the biotechnology age.

Generally, I would start any book review with a synopsis of the characters and motives involved, it's just not possible with this book. This is because Next has a very unique narrative style. Instead of a connected narrative, it is a large set of cautionary tales about the ethical issues surrounding biotechnology and genetic engineering. The plots involve transgenic apes and parrots, a talking ape, theft of stem cells, a man injecting himself with a maturity gene, harvesting of genes, a bizarre legal track dealing with gene ownership and patenting, genetically mutating animals for advertising (a Hershey's angel fish, for example) and so on. The casual reader might be forgiven at becoming confused in the beginning because characters are introduced rapidly and stories are inter-woven with skill but once the reader keeps in mind that these are all intended to prove a point for the author rather than being invested in the characters themselves the work resolves itself.

Crichton pulls data from a large number of resources - scientific journals, the internet, news reports (he even has an extended bibliography list at the end of the book) and inter-mingles them with his imagination to create terrifying situations which could become plausible especially when human greed and exploitation take precedence over ethical conduct. As the disclaimer states ’All the parts of this story are fictional excepting the ones that aren't’. What Crichton really wants to do here is raise attention towards some burning topics - banning of research, laws involving patenting and ownership of genes, commercialization of research and so on. The book succeeds very well, in that almost everyone who reads it will have their eyes opened to a lot of the ethical issues involved and the grey areas that remain unresolved in the media hype that is present around gene research today.

Also, while I emphasize disregarding the characters while reading this book, Crichton with unerring accuracy has included so many distressingly real types here - from the ambitious researcher, ruthless corporate lawyers, media hype related to research, reflections on the state of research in universities or the politics involved in academia and government that anyone who is even remotely connected to any such characters/ careers will identify with them.

Overall I found it to be a very educative take on genetics research. Crichton as usual places all of his customary research and information into the book. It is the readers job to separate the chaff from all the information overload. As a final thought, I have to say that I listened to the audio book (read by the extremely talented Dylan Baker) while on a long drive. I am almost convinced that if I had picked this up to read by myself, I would have found it too dry, largely because it's not so much fictional as informative. But actually listening and being able to discuss events/plot angles/science with others made it a very involving book.